BOSCH

Hieronymous Bosch (1450 - 1516)

Bosch produced strikingly original paintings, whose brilliant style, flickering brushstroke, and fantastic, nightmarish visions influenced twentieth century Surrealists. Bosch’s message, however, is rooted in the preoccupations of the early sixteenth century. His obsessions—sin, death, and damnation—reflect orthodox Christian concerns.

Bosch produced several triptychs. Among his most famous is The Garden of Earthly Delights. This painting, for which the original title has not survived, depicts paradise with Adam and Eve and many wondrous animals on the left panel, the earthly delights with numerous nude figures and tremendous fruit and birds on the middle panel, and hell with depictions of fantastic punishments of the various types of sinners on the right panel. When the exterior panels are closed the viewer can see, painted in grisaille, God creating the Earth. These paintings—especially the Hell panel—are painted in a comparatively sketchy manner which contrasts with the traditional Flemish style of paintings, where the smooth surface—achieved by the application of multiple transparent glazes—conceals the brushwork. In this painting, and more powerfully in works such as his Temptation of St. Anthony (Lisbon), Bosch draws with his brush. Not surprisingly, Bosch is also one of the most revolutionary draftsmen in the history of art, producing some of the first autonomous sketches in Northern Europe.

Bosch never dated his paintings. But—unusual for the time—he seems to have signed several of them, although other signatures purporting to be his are certainly not. Fewer than 25 paintings remain today that can be attributed to him. In the late sixteenth-century, Philip II of Spain acquired many of Bosch's paintings, including some probably commissioned and collected by Spaniards active in Bosch's hometown; as a result, the Prado Museum in Madrid now owns The Garden of Earthly Delights, the circular tabletop of The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things, the The Haywain Triptych and The Stone Operation.

Hieronymus Bosch. Scenes from the Passion of Christ and the Pelican with Her Young. Reverse of St. John the Evangelist on Patmos. 1485. Oil on panel. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemaldegalerie, Berlin, Germany.